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Modi's Trade Barricade

India blocks a global deal, despite America's pleas.

Updated Aug. 4, 2014 7:36 p.m. ET

Narendra Modi may prove to be a reformer of India's domestic economy, but the new Prime Minister is playing the spoiler at the World Trade Organization. Thursday was the deadline to approve the protocol to implement a trade facilitation agreement struck last December in Bali, and Mr. Modi effectively vetoed a deal that would have helped Indian exporters. This is a disaster for his country's poor.

It is also a disaster for the WTO, which needed the accord to revive the stalled Doha Round of talks, underway since 2001. Bali...